Many kinds of fruits and vegetables are bulk loaded after harvesting into trucks, trailers, rail cars and the like for shipment. Typically, fork lift equipment is used to manually dump large quantities of the produce into the bed of the trailer or rail car. Alternatively, conveyor systems are used to carry the produce along a moving belt to be deposited into the container. These methods can be slow, cumbersome and inefficient, and because of the clearances required, are often incapable of completely filling the bulk container with the produce.
Several types of centrifugal belt bulk material loading machines have been developed. For example, Sinden, U.S. Pat. No. 3,592,393 discloses a centrifugal belt thrower with a driven belt and a driven impeller. The impeller has pivoted vanes which can retract from the belt when they encounter material. However, such a system is not always suitable for use with produce, and is prone to jamming, breakage and wearing out.